VOA常速英语:Turning Deadly Insect Venom into Drugs(翻译)

Many of the plastic living quarters of the 400 or so insects in this laboratory bear the ominous skull and crossbones,meaning that their bite can be anything from painful to downright deadly.
这个实验室里堆积如山的塑料饲养箱里住着大约400只昆虫，每只箱子上都贴有瘆人的交叉骷髅图标，意味着一旦被昆虫叮咬，轻则痛苦难忍，重则凶多吉少直接毙命。

Their venom contains hundreds of chemical components, each with a different target and effect, and that makes them interesting to medical researchers.
它们的毒液中含有数百种化学成分。每种成分的作用对象和影响效果各不相同，这引起了医学研究人员的极大兴趣。

"Some of them we found actually can kill bacteria, and bacteria like E.Coli and staphylococcus, so very relevant at the moment where modern medicines are failing.And we’re also finding venoms that are modifying and killing cancer cells.”
“我们发现有些成分可以直接杀死细菌，诸如大肠杆菌和葡萄球菌。这可是实质性的突破，因为现代科学药物对此都束手无策。除此之外，我们还发现有些毒液可以改变甚至并杀死癌细胞。”

Finding new ways to kill bacteria is vital since the excessive use of antibiotics has created some ’superbugs’ like tuberculosis that have grown resistant to the medicines we’ve historically used against them.
独辟蹊径来消灭细菌是至关重要的。如今，抗生素的滥用滋生了一些诸如结核杆菌之类的“超级细菌”。它们已对人们之前使用的药物产生抗性。

Animal venom has already been used in medicines,but with about 100,000 different venomous animals in the world, there is much more to discover.
动物毒液在药物方面已得到广泛应用。尽管人们目前已发现大约10万种可以分泌毒液的动物，自然界依旧有更多的动物等着人类去发现和探索。

Trim says Venomtech researchers are trying to isolate and catalogue those components, looking for the ones that could be turned into new drugs.
Trim称，毒技术的研究学者目前正致力于分离并归类这些成分。从中提取某些成分应用于开发新型药品。

"The principle of Venomtech is separating venoms out into their component parts and targeting them to the right disease area.So this is the experience of the team in drug discovery of putting the right venom for the right drug target so we maximize the hits - and a hit is an interesting peptide that might make it to a drug.”
毒技术的原理是将这些毒液分离成各个组成部分，然后将其应用于各个相应的病区。这是药物开发团队依据多年的经验总结的，他们把各种毒液分别作用于相应的药物靶细胞，从而发现药物作用靶点。药物作用靶点是一种肽，在这里毒液转为药物发挥作用。

The insects are well-fed in order to produce as much venom as possible, which is extracted in a way that doesn’t harm the animal.
昆虫都是精心喂养，这样才能产生尽可能多的毒液。然后我们用一种对其无害的方式提取毒液。

"We anaesthetize the invertebrates, just put them to sleep, it makes it safer for us because if they’re immobile they can’t bite us. But also it’s better for the animals as well.And using a very tiny electrical stimulation, just to contract the muscle and squeeze the gland we get a small amount of venom produced.”
“我们会给无脊椎动物注射麻醉剂，然后它们就一动不动的睡着了，无法咬人，这样我们的安全也得到保证。而且对动物也有益无害。有时候我们还会使用轻微的电流刺激，挤压腺体，从而提取毒液。”

Components are separated through a two-phase process called high pressure liquid chromatography that yields about a hundred proteins per venom. Each protein contains between one and five different molecules that may someday be turned into powerful new drugs.
这些成分都是通过两段法分离，也就是高压液相色谱法，每种毒可产生一百种蛋白质。每种蛋白质又含有一到五种不同的分子，将来这些分子也许会应用于开发强大的新药物。